S.F.'s Huntington Hotel reportedly sold

Andrew S. Ross

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Photo: Eric Luse, The Chronicle

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Huntington Hotel's Nob Hill Spa includes an indoor pool with views of San Francisco.
BY ERIC LUSE/THE CHRONICLE
Ran on: 10-11-2011
The Huntington Hotel on San Francisco's Nob Hill has been sold for a &quo;little under $54 million.&quo; less

SPASD-C-31JAN01-DD-EL
Huntington Hotel's Nob Hill Spa includes an indoor pool with views of San Francisco.
BY ERIC LUSE/THE CHRONICLE
Ran on: 10-11-2011
The Huntington Hotel on San Francisco's Nob Hill has ... more

Photo: Eric Luse, The Chronicle

S.F.'s Huntington Hotel reportedly sold

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San Francisco's famed Huntington Hotel, which has been on the block for over a year, has been sold to a Singapore group.

The historic Nob Hill property will become part of Grace International, which specializes in luxury boutique hotels. The sale price: a "little under $54 million," I'm told, with the transaction to close within 45 days.

An executive at the San Francisco office of Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, the commercial broker handling the sale, would not comment for the record.

The Huntington, along with Carmel'sLa Playa Hotel and Cottages-by-the-Sea, plus the ground lease at San Francisco's Galleria Park Hotel, was put on the market in early 2010.

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The longtime family owners - descendants of Sacramento developer and restaurateur Newton Copeand his wife, Dolly Fritz- decided to sell their hotel holdings primarily for estate-planning purposes, I was told at the time.

A call to the family's property management company, Nob Hill Properties, was not returned Monday.

The Singapore group appears to be relatively new on the hospitality scene. A call and e-mail to the company's Singapore office were not returned on Monday afternoon.

According to its website, the 8-year-old company focuses "primarily on the acquisition, conceptualization and development" of boutique hotels. The site lists two luxury boutique hotels in Singapore, the Scarlet, a five-star, 84-room hotel, which Grace International's executive director, Indonesian-born Geeson Lawadinata,bought for approximately $35 million in 2004, and the Saff, a 79-room boutique hotel opened last October.

The company says it plans to acquire more properties in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific regions.

The Huntington is the company's first outside Singapore, I'm told. Meanwhile, the Carmel properties and the ground lease at the Galleria Park Hotel also have been sold off to one or more parties, but details were not available.

Judgment call: It had little to do with public health, and much more with throwing a bone to organized labor.

That would be Gov. Jerry Brownsigning off Monday on AB183, banning the sale of alcohol at retail self-checkout stands.

Authored by Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, the bill took particular aim at one company - the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain, whose business model is built around the almost exclusive use of unmanned self-checkout stands.

"We're disappointed that politics has prevailed over solid judgment," said Brendan Wonnacott, a spokesman for Fresh & Easy, responding to Brown's signature.

The California Grocers Associationweighed in with a statement of its own. "We are disappointed that the governor failed to see the true motives behind this legislation and decided to protect union interests over new business and more jobs in the state," said the trade group's president, Ron Fong.

Supporters of the bill, which included Mothers Against Drunk Driving, say the current safeguard Fresh & Easy employs - alcohol purchases cannot be made without a store clerk being involved - are relatively easy to bypass. Fong said there is no evidence that the system makes it easy for minors to purchase alcohol.

While the company is looking closely at the language of the bill, and "examining our options," Wonnacott said his company's expansion plans are proceeding on schedule. "This does not change our plan to roll out more stores in the Bay Area and California," he told me.

The law is set to take effect Jan. 1, and there's a similar bill in the wings courtesy of San Francisco SupervisorEric Mar.

Sunnyvale is set to get its first Fresh & Easy store on Oct. 26. San Francisco's third Fresh & Easy - at the old Bell Marketon Silver Avenue in the Portola district - opens "early next year," said Wonnacott. No date is set for when the shuttered DeLano's Market on South Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco's Mission District will become the city's fourth.

By early next year, the company, headquartered in Southern California, will have at least 15 stores in the Bay Area, and more than 130 statewide, employing more than 4,000 people.

The company is a subsidiary of British supermarket chain Tesco, which has been losing piles of money on the U.S. venture. Now it may have to adapt parts of its labor-saving business model.

Other retailers who are relying more on self-checkout stands may also have to examine their options. "We must now move forward as an industry and work together on the implementation of this legislation," said Fong.

"Our only hope is that this bill does not force grocers out of business, or keep vital jobs out of our state."

Stopping the flow: There'll be much to talk about as well as good works recognized at the "State of the Race" conference, sponsored by Bay Area Blacks in Philanthropy on Wednesday in San Mateo.

The theme of this year's conference is "Beyond the Neighborhood: African Americans Competing in the Regional Economy." The latest census figures show that African Americans in the Bay Area are among the hardest hit in terms of rising poverty rates and unemployment, and the region has witnessed significant declines in its black population.

The one-day conference features business, nonprofit and philanthropy leaders discussing "solutions that can spark innovation, employment and entrepreneurship for the region's African American communities."